Bio

İlke Şahin (b. 1992, Istanbul) is a London-based artist working across sculpture, installation, and film. Her practice develops through skin reactions, surface relations, material experiments, and chemistry. Working with eco-resin, clay, silicone, and copper, she creates reactive skin-surfaces, bodily fragments, and preserved specimen-like forms inspired by wounds, scars, skin conditions, and bodily states. Approaching both living and non-living entities as bodies capable of acting, reacting, protecting, and negotiating their conditions, Şahin's work is informed by phenomenology of perception and vital materialism. She completed her MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2024, following a BA in Interior Architecture at Istanbul Technical University in 2016.

Artist Statement

In my art practice, I work across sculpture, installation, and film. My work develops through skin reactions, surface relations, material experiments, and chemistry. I approach skin and bodily gestures through the bodily states of both living and non-living entities.

My recent works take the form of reactive skins, sections of tissue, bodily fragments, and preserved specimens. I work with eco-resin, clay, silicone, and copper, creating surfaces inspired by wounds, scars, and skin conditions. My sculptures move through stages of development and deterioration: solidifying, liquefying, corroding, oxidising, and decaying.

In my formal research, I begin with somatic memory and focus on illness, injury, wound response, and anatomical and chemical defence mechanisms as bodily states: how a body acts, reacts, communicates, protects, or negotiates its condition. My theoretical research revolves around phenomenology of perception and vital materialism, which allow me to approach multi-sensory perception, touch, and matter as active forces.